Le Cirque Navire

by Chele Cooke

  Just as suddenly as she’d disappeared from him, she was back. Her gasps were still punctuated by the breathless hiccups of tears but she stopped screaming. She pushed herself up from the floor so quickly that Jack thought she might topple over. Jumping towards her, he wrapped an arm around her back and grasped her elbows, holding her steady.

  “You’re okay,” he murmured, cradling her against his chest. “You’re alright. You’re here.”

  “I saw…”

  “I know, I know.”

  She was focusing again. Her gaze found items and clung on instead of seeing straight through them. A thin sheen of sweat covered her face amongst the tears. Jack held her a little tighter.

  “It’s okay, Hadley, I’m here.”

  Jack led her over to the chair and eased her down, kneeling at her side. The photographs were scattered on the floor around them and she looked to each one.

  “Am I going mad?” she asked. “I saw…”

  “You’re not going mad.”

  Her darting gaze finally settled on him. She looked at every inch of his face. The hiccupping had stopped and her breathing settled into a steady rhythm, though her eyes were wide and her lips parted, her entire body trembling.

  “Did the cirque do this?” she asked. “You said my brother was poisoned. Did they do the same to me?”

  Gulping, Jack got to his feet and collected the other chair. He pulled it close and set it down in front of her. Their knees pressed together as he leaned across the gap and used his thumb to brush the tears from beneath her eyes. She didn’t stop him.

  “No, you didn’t drink anything, it’s not that,” he said gently. With the tears gone, his fingers went instinctively to a lock of hair, pushing it behind her ear. She didn’t even seem to notice. He pulled back and clasped his hands in his lap.

  “Then what? Why am I seeing…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. Whatever she had seen was horrible, terrifying, far more so than Annalise’s usual visions.

  “Anna died last night,” he said.

  He’d not wanted to tell Hadley before. She hadn’t known Annalise, it wouldn’t matter to her when she had her brother in danger. With Hatliffe looking for her, he knew she’d need to know what had happened, but he hadn’t been able to find the words. He needed them now.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Anna’s gift was real, she could see the future.” He stared at the place their knees met. “I didn’t know it before but the gift ate away at her. Each time she looked into the future, it took a piece of her. Hatliffe said that it was a price, that Anna knew.”

  He couldn’t look at her anymore. Like Hadley, he stared at the photographs littering the ground. They told the story of such a happy young family. Photographs of the young boy and the little girl, children who never thought their parents could leave them in the dead of night. The people in the photographs looked like nothing could ever trouble them.

  “By the time you left the cirque last night, it had taken the last of her. She wasn’t Anna anymore. She died when my boss demanded she look for you and your brother. She was just… just gone.”

  Jack chewed the inside of his lip, blinking back the burning behind his eyes. Hadley slid her hands along her thighs towards him but seemed to think better of it and tucked them under her legs, clinging on.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” she whispered.

  Nodding, Jack took a deep breath and lifted her gaze to meet his.

  “Thank you.”

  Hadley started to speak a few times before she finally forced out the words.

  “But I still don’t understand. What does that have to do with me?”

  The terror within her had calmed but he could still see it when he searched her face. She was pale, looking almost ghostly in contrast to her dark hair.

  “The gift passes. It jumps,” he said. “When it’s finished with a person, it finds someone else. My boss believes that it has passed to you.”

  “What?”

  Jack gulped. He could feel the burning of betrayal in his cheeks. He should have told her sooner.

  “He’s not just looking for Lachlan. He wants you too.”

  Hadley shoved the chair back as she got to her feet. She strode past him, gathering up the photos from the floor with frantic precision.

  “What if I don’t want it?” she demanded fiercely. “I can pass it on, right? The fortune teller, Anna, she passed it on, so I do the same, right? I’ll just tell them that I’ll give it to someone else!”

  He glanced over his shoulder and shook his head. Hadley stood again, clutching a messy pile of photographs.

  “I don’t think it works like that.”

  “Well, how does it work?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then who says I can’t pass it on?”

  Rubbing his hands over his face, Jack steeled himself.

  “Anna saw you before we even landed here,” he said. “She saw you on the ship.”

  The photos slapped on the wood as she slammed them onto the table.

  “So that’s it then?” she cried. “I have to leave because a fortune teller had a vision? I have to run off and join a cirque, leaving my life, my brother? They can’t force me.”

  Jack got up and faced her. Stepping towards her, he took hold of her shoulders and held her steady. She trembled beneath him. One of the rare people who could remember him, who could truly see him, and she was terrified of his life. He didn’t blame her.

  “No,” he said slowly. “No, I don’t think you should go. I saw what this did to Anna.”

  “Then what, Jack?”

  “I think you should stay here. If you don’t use the gift, if you avoid it all, you should be able to go about your life. I’ll make sure they don’t find you.”

  Hadley looked away from him, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth. He watched her, waiting for her reaction. She picked up the top photo and held it between them. The young family smiled brightly at the camera, even younger than the picture she had shown him before. Hadley couldn’t have been older than three years old.

  “Hadley?”

  She didn’t look up.

  “Hadley, what did you see?” he asked.

  Tears gathered in her eyes. She stared at the photo until tears splashed on the glossy surface. Her fingers trembled and her breath quickened again.

  Finally, with a fear and ferocity he hadn’t seen in anyone in a long time, she looked at him.

  “I saw the way my brother dies.”

  It had been a long time since Lachlan Tack had done a standard patrol of the south-east quadrant. Most of the time these sorts of jobs were left to the lower ranked soldiers. His job was organising them and making sure that every post was covered. He filed paperwork and conducted low-level infraction disciplinaries. Not today.

  He’d needed to get out of the station. The stuffy air in his small office had been constricting and oppressive, making it hard to breathe. Each time he closed his eyes, he could see the body on the straw-strewn floor of the menagerie. With each inhale of air, he could smell the blood. When he left his office and went to perform other tasks, like dealing with the high number of people in the cells, the noise and smell made him nauseous.

  The call from the Corazón had been a godsend, though he would never admit it. He avoided the place as often as possible, but he’d been told by the Alnard that Dinah had asked for him.

  Lachlan had received a few odd looks as he locked his office and strode through the station, a gun fastened at his hip. Whispers followed him as he passed through the busy corridors, murmurs that he was going on patrol, and more importantly that he was going alone. Patrols were done in pairs for safety. However, seeing as he wasn’t scheduled to be on patrol anyway, he didn’t pull someone from their usual rota. At that moment, he just wanted to be alone. And, most likely, Dinah had only called for him because it was some personal matter. She had probably become caught up in the debauchery after the cirque, and wanted some assurances that
she wouldn’t be arrested.

  The air outside was light and warm, a dusty breeze that twisted through the streets. He hadn’t been on an active patrol in a long time but he couldn’t remember feeling this conscious of people watching him before. Everywhere he went he could feel eyes on his back, whispers dogging his footsteps. Had he simply forgotten about this feeling whilst walking the streets as a coalition soldier, or was it something new? He turned multiple times but never saw anyone paying attention to him. Surely the people of the city were used to the patrols. It wouldn’t be anything worth paying attention to. Yet the feeling of being watched, being followed, tracked him on his route.

  It seemed everyone he passed was discussing the cirque and the things they’d seen. Most were smart enough to keep their conversations hushed but some yelled the things they had seen and done, including a rather crude discussion about the dancers who had slowly shed their clothes for the audience’s approval. Lachlan walked by them quickly. He knew that he should have been arresting them, or at least questioning them on the fact they’d attended an illegally hitched ship, but the fact of the matter was that he’d probably need to haul in the entire south-east quadrant if he did so, including himself and his sister. The cells were already full after the central had refused their request for transfers, apparently with more than enough to deal with themselves.

  The Corazón Tavern stood a street back from the main market square. Its windows were so dusty that it was impossible to see inside but Lachlan was sure they left it that way on purpose. There had been a time when the bottom panes of each window had been painted black, but one too many bar brawls and irregular paint deliveries had stopped that tradition a long time ago. Some of the locals had started to call it Corazón Solitario—The Lonely Heart—since the prohibition laws had come in. Sure enough, as the alcohol had dried up and the taverns had nothing to offer but cordial and alcohol-free beers, business had suffered to the point where most had closed down. Only the Corazón survived in its current state in the south-east quadrant. The rest had been combined with other businesses so that they could continue to pay the high mortgage prices the Coalition put on them.

  Corapolvo had been one of the Spanish settled planets, not that many spoke the language anymore. They learned about it in school, taught about the different planets and their heritage. Like everything else in the coalition, however, their language had morphed into a conglomeration of the different nationalities since the unification. Some were still incredibly proud of their heritage and Lachlan had been called in to break apart many a fight between purists and coalition supporters in the early days of his career.

  The early afternoon business was slow as Lachlan walked in but having not been to the tavern in a long time, he couldn’t say whether it was normal. He glanced at each of the five patrons before heading to the bar. The landlady, Dinah, stood behind the bar chewing on a painted nail. The moment she saw him approaching she grabbed a cloth and wiped the section in front of him clean.

  “Captain, it isn’t often we see you here,” she said, glancing over her shoulder.

  “Hello, Dinah,” Lachlan replied.

  A number of stools stood in front of the bar and he slid one out of his way to stand closer. A litcom was flickering and fading with a low battery next to him. Dinah noticed him looking and grabbed it, spinning it to face her. She smeared the cloth against the screen and tugged the battery from the bottom, tossing it underneath the bar and hurrying to the corner to grab a new one.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked as she fitted the battery into the litcom and made a show of turning it around and positioning it correctly. She didn’t look at him.

  Lachlan’s eyes narrowed. He glanced over his shoulder at each of the customers again. They each nursed their non-alcoholic beers, two with food they picked at. None of them were paying them the slightest bit of attention.

  “Is everything alright, Dinah?”

  “Alright?” she squeaked, her eyes widening as she wiped off the bar again. “Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  Lachlan gave her a long look, only just hiding an amused grin.

  “You called the station,” he said. “I was told you asked for me.”

  “There must have been a mistake,” she trilled. “I didn’t call.”

  Lachlan’s eyes narrowed. She was too cheerful, too friendly for how they’d left things.

  “Well, I was just on patrol anyway. We’ve had quite a high number infractions in the city and you might be a target.”

  “Been a long time since I’ve seen you on patrol around my tavern, Lachlan,” she said, finally looking up at him. “It’s sweet you care to check in on me.”

  He grimaced and looked away.

  “Other duties,” he mumbled.

  Dinah nodded absently, glanced over her shoulder again, and took some glasses from the shelf, lining them up on the bar and picking up each in turn, looking for stains she could polish away.

  “Dinah,” Lachlan said slowly. “Have you had anything from the cirque?”

  “Cirque?” she practically squealed, jumping away from him. “What?”

  Lachlan had been expecting for the tavern owners to be cagey with him about receiving deliveries from the cirque but he hadn’t been expecting this. Dinah seemed about ready to jump out of her skin.

  “Look, I’m not going to bust you, alright. I just need to know how much stock they’re hauling out. If I can get a decent idea of that I can…”

  He fell silent. Dinah replaced the glasses beneath the bar and it was only then that he noticed her hands were shaking. He’d not seen Dinah this nervous since the night of the last dance in school. Frowning, he leaned onto the bar.

  “Di?”

  Dinah’s eyes were so wide that she looked like an innocent child again, not the woman he knew she had become. It had been too difficult to see her after school. After one too many awkward run-ins back when she’d just been a waitress here, he’d quickly made sure none of his patrols had included the Corazón.

  She stared back him, wringing the cloth in her hands. Her gaze went to each of the customers and back to Lachlan. For a moment, she simply looked at him, her gaze tracing his face. Then she nodded.

  “Come out back, Lachlan, I’ll explain,” she said. “Where people aren’t listening.”

  Lachlan straightened and followed her around the bar. He took a final look at the customers. He might have been worried that they’d be behind the bar without someone to keep an eye out, but it wasn’t like they could steal much anymore. Dinah slipped through to the back room. She didn’t hold the door open for him and she was halfway across the room when he stepped in after her, allowing the door to swing shut behind him.

  “Dinah, is everything alright?” he asked.

  She turned around to look at him. Twisting the cloth in her hands again, she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Lachlan,” she whispered. “I tried, but…I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry? Sorry about…”

  Lachlan froze, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping. The barrel was cold where it pressed into the back of his neck. Dinah’s gaze flickered to the person behind him and back.

  “I’m so sorry,” she muttered again and hurried past him, back out into the bar.

  “Dinah, wait!” he cried just as the bag was pulled down over his head and the butt of the gun slammed into his temple, crumpling him to the floor.

  “Sir, the Advance team are returning, you said you wanted to know.”

  Cole looked up from the paperwork spread across his desk and nodded. The roustabout had taken off his cap and was holding it respectfully in front of him as he addressed the ringmaster and owner of the cirque.

  “Thank you,” he replied. “Tell Mr. Nejem to meet me in the main ring, please.”

  The man nodded and hurried from the room, leaving the door open behind him. Usually, Cole might have chastised him for it but his thoughts were elsewhere. He got to his feet and grabbed his jacket, slipping it o
n and fastening it. Brushing the dust from the lapels, he straightened his collar. He was almost at the door when he turned back. Picking up a small hipflask, he slotted it into the inner pocket and left his quarters, locking the door behind him.

  He arrived at the ring just as Malak Nejem was leading a hooded man through the gap in the stands. Two Advance men trailed behind them, keeping their distance. Malak dragged the soldier to the wooden pole in the centre of the ring, forcing him around until his back pressed against it. He untied the ropes with swift fingers as Cole approached them with silent footsteps across the sand.

  “Behind your back,” he ordered the hooded man.

  The man twitched beneath the hood but he reached both hands behind his back. His fingertips brushed against the wood and he stretched back further until his shoulders arched with the effort. Malak wound the rope around his wrists on the other side of the beam, tugging tight and bringing grunts from the soldier. Once he was secure, Malak stepped back, glancing past the soldier to see Cole watching them.

  “Thank you,” Cole said with an effortless charm. “If you wouldn’t mind, please go about your duties in ensuring that we are all set up for tonight and send Mr. Clarke to me.”

  Malak glanced between the hooded soldier and Cole. He shuffled his feet through the sand leaving long streaks of bare metal.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “He is a…”

  “I’m quite aware of what he is,” Cole chuckled. “Do you believe I cannot handle a single restrained man?”

  He didn’t wait for Malak’s response before moving forwards. Taking hold of the top of the bag, he waved the two Advance men away before tugging it off. Lachlan Tack stared at him, his nostrils flared with his snorting breath. Lint from the bag clung to his short hair and his eyelashes. He blinked furiously and shook his head, trying to rid himself of the annoyance.

  Malak took another uncertain look at the soldier before turning and walking away. He was almost at the ringside when Cole stepped around the soldier.